Delay-constrained sleeping mechanism for energy saving in cache-aided ultra-dense network

We investigate an energy-saving sleeping mechanism in a cache-aided ultra-dense network (UDN) with delay constraints. As in existing works, we consider the video and file contents of the UDN. The video contents are cached at and delivered by a small-cell base-station (sBS). The cache-aided sBS cooperates with a macro-cell base-station (mBS) to service the file contents. The optimal sleeping strategy that conserves energy under the delay constraint is formulated as an energy-consumption minimization problem under the network stability condition with a guaranteed delay constraint. To find its solution, the minimization problem is transformed into a joint optimization problem of energy consumption and delay by the Lyapunov technique. A delay-constrained sleeping algorithm is proposed, and its effectiveness is confirmed by the numerical results of a simulation study. A tradeoff between energy consumption and delay, achieved by adjusting the weighting factor in the cache-aided UDN, is also demonstrated.